


The Lesser Brother

by cynicalwerewolf



Series: The Wyrdness that is Life [2]
Category: The Real Ghostbusters
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-16
Updated: 2013-06-16
Packaged: 2017-12-14 22:26:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/842064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynicalwerewolf/pseuds/cynicalwerewolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Egon Spengler doesn't have a brother. But he somehow has an identical twin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Looking Through a Twisted Mirror

People with too much credulity often attribute the beginning of every momentous occasion to God, Fate, or some other outside force. They do not have proper respect for the power of chance. In truth, it was pure coincidence that I was even in New York on that day. A client had scheduled a meeting but had not put in an appearance, so I was making my way back to my hotel suite, when I felt it happen.

There had been a tension gathering in the air all day, a subliminal humming sound as though a finely tuned piece of machinery was about to explode when suddenly…it did.

I was at my hotel, so I did something I almost never did. I went and turned on the television set and scanned through the channels until I came to one proclaiming that they were receiving live feed from a converted firehouse on the edge of Chinatown.

It looked like an explosion had just occurred inside the building, originating in the basement by my estimate. The announcer was saying something about people called the Ghostbusters in conjunction with the EPA, but as soon as I saw the feed I went into shock, for I knew one of the people on the site, specifically, a man being restrained from violence by two police officers.

He was me.

He was Egon Spengler.

I never turned the television off that night, even after the news report had switched to a rather banal comedy and then back to a news report about the Ghostbusters. I did not even notice the giant marshmallow man as it passed very near my hotel. I was too busy internalizing the shock. And, for the first time in my life, getting stinking drunk rather than trying to analyze the situation and my response to it.

Oddly enough, the alcohol seemed to enhance the process of understanding instead of decreasing it.

Ever since I was five, I had been plagued by the feeling that I was not the real Egon Spengler, son of Edwin and Katherine Spengler, and so on and so forth. I had perfectly clear memories up to that point, but they were dissociated, as if they were not mine.

I felt distanced from my parents as well as my past. Father never noticed, he would not have as long as I behaved in a manner he approved of. He was not a man given to emotions or empathy... Now that I thought about it, though, he had interacted with me in a slightly different manner until after I turned eight. He became very different then.

Mother also seemed distant, more so than was her wont in my memories, although whether that was a product of my mind, a reaction to my emotional distance, or a certainty of her own that I was not her child I do not know.

She and I have become closer, but the relationship we have does not match that which I remember from before I was five, even accounting for the natural evolution a parent-child relationship undergoes as the child ages.

I had a great deal of difficulty expressing emotions, which served me well in my Father’s house but did not serve me nearly as well in college, as my cold aloofness did not win me friends or even close acquaintances. Furthermore, I was plagued by the idea that I was not even human, even feeling that my true nature was completely alien to humanity.

After my first year in college, I came to the conclusion that I needed some background on human nature. I went home that summer and announced that, in addition to majoring in physics, I would major in psychology.

To say that Father was not pleased would be an understatement. He had long ago decided that I would follow in his footsteps and become a pure physicist. To him, psychology was a soft science, as was everything to do with the human body or mind. If I was going to go into any other science, it should be chemistry.

I could not have told him about the real reasons I was going into psychology, so instead I told him that I felt that I could support my, and the lab’s, physics program better if I went into psychology, rather than remaining a pure physicist. He grudgingly accepted that excuse, and as I progressed from undergraduate to graduate school, I continued to split my focus between physics and psychology, eventually receiving doctorates in both from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

As I became progressively more inebriated, I remembered one day early in the November after my twelfth birthday.

I had been working on my homework when I experienced an overwhelming sense of panic. It was as if I were being told that I had been _given_ this life to live as a placeholder for another and that the one I had replaced had come to take it away from me, or rather, to take it _back_ from me.

That night, I overheard Father tell Mother that a street child had come to the door with the ludicrous story that he was their son. I could not tell either of them this, but I felt that this unknown boy’s story was true. I could tell no one my feelings that I was not human, but something _other_.

I had been a disappointment to Father, I thought, reaching the maudlin portion of inebriation. He had expected a brilliant son, which I never was.

I discovered _that_ in working on my doctoral theses. I could not make the lightning fast connections of two pieces of data that were unconnected at first sight, to make something new. I was an adequate scientist, but no more.

I recalled being brilliant, at least as brilliant as a five year old can be, but I was no longer so.

As I sunk into sleep, I thought bitterly that I was intelligent, but not brilliant. Brilliance… belonged to humanity… not… whatever I was….

* * *

The next morning, I woke with a headache equal to all the headaches I had ever had in my life combined and further exponentiated by three. This pain was amplified by my leaving the television on last night.

As I cautiously went about my morning ablutions, I was struck by an idea. Perhaps the blond man on the television last night was _not_ another Egon Spengler. I knew that we had family in New England; perhaps he was a distant cousin.

My gathering hope was shattered by the next words from the television set, “…founders of the Ghostbusters, Doctors Peter Venkman, Raymond Stantz, and Egon Spengler…” and at that last name, a picture of the other blond man was shown on the screen.

With the picture enlarged, I could see that from the shoulders up the only differences present between the two of us were that his glasses had red rims, rather than black ones, and his hair was longer than mine had ever been permitted to be, shoulder length, instead of cut short.

Shaking my head as I turned off the television, I considered my options for the day. First, I could call the man who I had been supposed to meet yesterday. I could stay in the room doing paperwork, waiting for him to call me.

Or, I could try and find this other Egon Spengler, try to meet him in person.

As I finished that last thought, I was already looking for my shoes and a phonebook.

* * *

Stepping out of the taxi, I looked across the street to the heavily damaged firehouse. There would be significant repairs necessary before it would be in usable condition again.

I shivered slightly. Even though it was a warm and bright spring day, it felt like a day in mid-November, a day that warns of winter’s coming and yet is still autumnal.

Not day... _night_ , a corner of my mind whispered, the corner where I shoved everything I could not understand and which frightened me.

_Night, alien stars shining on an ice palace high on a mountain-top, shining like it was carved from a diamond. My perfect castle, the crown jewel of a mountain range surpassing all mere mortal ones in its stark beauty. Spring will never warm it, nor will the sun bring light to it as long as I am queen…_

I shook my head. Where had that come from? I glanced around, deciding to retreat to the alley behind me to sort out my thoughts.

Well, to answer that I would have to determine when that particular memory came to my attention. I know that a Doctor Loftus is working on what she terms as ‘false memories’, but this wasn’t my memory but someone else’s. Not only was it someone else’s memory, but that person had never been human.

Not even as human as I.

After some thought, I finally recalled the first time that vision occurred. I had been working on my psychology doctoral thesis, collecting the background information necessary for me to come up with an experiment with a chance to work properly. Half a dozen of the references were extremely obscure, but my advisor had sworn to me that they were in the library. After looking through the filing system twice, I was extremely frustrated and I felt something…slip…into place.

I have no memories of the approximately five minutes that followed, but when I came back to myself, I had the reference cards in my hands. 

That night, I dreamed of the diamond castle. 

The chill intensified. I looked up, and was extremely startled. If it had been an October night, I would have suspected a Halloween party, but it was a bright May morning and I was seeing three of the oddest women I had ever laid eyes on.

The first resembled nothing so much as a humanoid pallid bat. She had a relatively boxy face, in addition to short, ash blonde hair that looked more like fur than hair and ears as long as my hand. Even though she was talking to her companions, at this distance I couldn’t see if she had fangs, although I suspected she did. I couldn’t see her eyes or if she had wings, because she was wearing sunglasses and, of all things, a cloak. 

I shifted my attention to the second, who looked like she should have been wearing a cloak. This woman looked like a human carved out of shadow, had a featureless face at this distance, and glowing red eyes. She looked like she should have been playing the Ghost of Christmas Future in a high end production of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. The only thing that didn’t fit was her clothing. She was dressed in a well-worn New York University tee shirt and a pair of tattered blue jeans. Not artistically tattered, mind, but tattered from much natural wear and tear. 

Shaking my head, I turned my attention to the third woman, who was distinctly statuesque. Literally. She looked like a mobile granite statue. For the most part, because her hair looked like it was composed of obsidian. An American Indian face, I noted, with a touch of western Russian.

The triad reached the door of the firehouse, which was closed as much as the both its and the building’s structural damage would permit, and the bat person knocked. The door opened almost as soon as she did and two somewhat recognizable men appeared.

They were clearly two of the Ghostbusters, Raymond Stantz and the other Egon Spengler, but they were different. Stantz was more obviously so with a corona of lightning dancing over his body. With Spengler it was more difficult to see the changes, especially given my myopia, but he appeared to be more attenuated and was…tattooed?

No. I didn’t know what it was but I knew that unless he was using an older photograph of himself for publicity, which I doubted, and he had changed drastically from myself, which I also doubted, he would not have been tattooed. But that’s what he appeared to be.

I observed their greetings and the three women going in. I suspected that they were going to look at whatever device had exploded last night. I wondered why the three women were necessary and what was happening in that place.

Suddenly the shadows I was standing in engulfed me.

_Six crystal dice lying in my hand. I had never seen or felt such a material. They were still cold despite having been held in my hand for several minutes._

_They had…called to me. It was illogical to say so, but that did not change the reality of what they had done. I wondered fleetingly why my parents and I had always been forbidden by Grandmother Astrid to come up here, especially when I noticed that no one else in the family had been restricted in a similar manner._

_While trying to think of explanations, I absently rolled the dice. Four times. Five times. Six ti… I felt a cold wind blow through the space._

I came back to myself in a basement room. There was an enormous hole in the ceiling but the fragments of ceiling left shadows, which I was standing in. I heard…a distortion of my voice?

No, not my voice but the other Egon Spengler’s, saying, “…would have preferred not to do this, but with the escape of all of the spirits, most of whom will be extremely agitated, we need to have a new containment unit fully constructed and enchanted as soon as possible.”

One of the women, sounding amused, said, “You just don’t want to deal with Dunstan Knows-the-True-Path again.”

A lighter male voice, presumably Dr. Stantz, said, “Well, yeah. We mostly don’t want him near Peter, they really don’t get along, and…”

Another woman interrupted, saying, “It is understandable. Knows-the-True-Path was named Dark Stone truly by his parents. I have met him thrice when at the Silver Net, and while he is honorable in his own way, he is more stubborn than a motley of satyr Broadbacks.”

I wondered about what they were saying, but from the noises above it seemed like they were going to come down here. It probably would be best if I wasn’t he…

_I looked down. Six sixes looked up at me._

_Looking up, I saw a void forming in the air. It was unnatural, being at the same time both repulsive and attractive. I tried to move, call out, do anything, but I could not. I could barely breathe._

_The hole stabilized and through it came a woman who was just as attractive and repulsive as the hole had been. Fleetingly, I thought of Hel, Loki’s daughter. Father disliked mythology, but had allowed me to read a few of the books of tales that Mom had. I wasn’t supposed to have read the Norse myths, or indeed anything other than a few carefully selected fairy tales, but I had sneaked a few looks, although I did not understand most of what I had read._

_She gazed down at me, and said, “Foolish bright spark, thou hast sealed thy doom.”_

Returning to the real world, I wondered what was happening to me.

I wondered what I was.

* * *

Ten weeks after returning to Ohio I finally had all the information on one (other) Egon Eustace Spengler that a variety of private investigators could find, including some that in all likelihood had not been gathered by legal means. I knew I should probably have been more concerned about that, but I was so curious about what had happened to my double that I couldn’t find it in myself to care. The only problem was that I had hired enough people that I had a lot of duplicated information.

I frowned at the piles of paper on the dining room table. I had taken two weeks off from work as personal leave and had informed Uncle Cyrus that I didn’t want to be disturbed unless the labs blew up or the apocalypse occurred. Mother was out of town seeing her family in California and wasn’t due back for several days yet, so I should be safe from disturbances.

However, that did not solve the problem I had with sorting the useful information from the chaff and the repeated information, which would be tedious work.

Well, I thought, I could…N-

_I walked through my domain with my head held high. My castle, full of treasures beyond the comprehension of the mayfly mortal slaves I had captured._

_I smiled, thinking of the stories they had made up to explain myself and the lower beings of my ilk. One herd knew me as Hel, the daughter of Chaos and ruler of the unworthy dead. Another named me Persephone, the queen of the Underworld where all things go to be counted._

_I kept the tale-spinners who had first told me of these beings, they are a part of my collection so that they may tell me those tales whenever I wish to hear them, bound to their books of tales scribed with a mixture of blood and distilled shadows…_

As I came out of that memory I shuddered. That cold, inhuman being…I never wanted to touch its thoughts again. I decided that until I found a way to control these odd spurts of power, I would not do any literature based research. I would not even think of doing literature based research.

Of course, I needed more answers to do that…

Changing focus with extreme effort, I looked at the papers on the table. They were sorted by what I, with a little examination, deduced was relevance. With a sigh, I picked up the report on top of the most relevant pile.

It was a police report dated November 7, 1965. Sparing a thought to wonder how this had survived file purges and the assorted accidents that could befall a file I opened it. It was a report on the supposedly indigent person who had come to the door of our house, specifically a report on potential abuse. To be more specific, the type where either the individual was self abusing, both extremely lucky and extremely unlucky, or they were being abused.

I leafed through the report noting mentions of specific scarring patterns, bruising, cold damage, not to mention the fact that he had been found wearing only a piecemeal kilt. No needle marks or signs of drug use, I noted, but they couldn’t determine who (or what) had done it. The police at the time had, after an offhand comment by the other Egon, as well as looking at the scar patterns determined that the abuser was a woman, there were scars that could only have been made by a human with long fingernails and so reasonably clearly a woman, although that went over like a lead balloon as was to be expected given the year…

“What are you looking at, Egon?”

In shock, I looked up into my mother’s curious gaze. “Mom! You weren’t supposed to be back for four more days.”

“Yes, well, your Uncle Cyrus called. Said you were acting suspiciously, not attending to business matters, ignoring telephone calls from him and your subordinates, hiring private detectives. He suspects you of having an affair with a married woman or some such thing.”

“I wish it were that simple,” I muttered. I gathered my courage and asked, “Mom…when did you ascertain the fact I wasn’t your son?”

She froze and then bowed her head, saying, “I knew that you weren’t the boy I gave birth to the moment we found you in the attic when we were going through Grandmother Astrid’s goods after her funeral.”

“How did you know?” I asked in a small voice.

“I can’t explain how, I simply saw you and I _knew_ ,” she said. “When did you find out?”

“I found another Egon Spengler, Mom. It’s hardly a common name. Certainly not common when combined with a man who looks almost identical to myself,” I said bitterly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“With what evidence? You are, and have always been, your father’s son. Not,” she continued when I was about to protest this description, “The son of the man who husband became when you were eight, but the man I married, the man who would entertain far-fetched ideas as long as there was even a shred of properly gathered evidence. Even he, or you, would not have entertained such an idea based on only a feeling. Even one of my feelings. I knew when he returned, November 7, 1965, but if I couldn’t have told the man I married that, I couldn’t have told the man who took his place July 13, 1962.”

“You remember the exact dates?” I asked.

She gave me a look, “You don’t get your eidetic memory from just your father, Egon. Even if I didn’t have one, those dates would still have been branded into my memory.”

“You knew? And you didn’t tell me? Or him?” I wasn’t certain which him I was referring to, whether it was the other Egon or my…his…whoever’s father.

“I tried. I tried to get your father to believe me that night, he eventually told me to keep my mouth shut about the whole matter. I got in touch with my Aunt Gertrude and Uncle Harry who had moved from California to New England. They wanted a child, and were willing to adopt the…other young Egon and keep in contact with me about his life. They did so until they died in a car accident, which occurred while he was in college.” She looked down at the file I was holding, and snatched it out of my hands before I was prepared for that move.

I said, “You don’t want to read...,” she ignored me, reading the file with horrified eyes. I, at least, had the clinical background to remain detached. She had no such training.

“What happened to him to cause that damage?” she asked me, after having read the entire file.

“I don’t know. I was planning on finishing my research and then going back to New York and talking with him myself,” I said.

I paused, and then asked, “Mom? Do-did you ever care for me? Or was it just pretend?”

She dropped the file and held out her arms for me, tears in her eyes, I went and she hugged me, “Lix, I have always loved you. He will probably ask me the same question, but I will, and have always, loved him. I love both of you. I may only have given birth to one of you, but to me you are both my sons.” 

Lix...She had called me that since I was seven and I had been involved in several near car accidents in one week. It was short for ‘Felix’, or ‘fortunate’.

I asked, “Mom, do you want to come with me? To visit him?”

She smiled at me while blinking back tears, “Yes. I want to see how my other son has turned out.”


	2. Uncomfortable Conclusions

Whistling softly after showing the Sisters to the door, I made my way back to the basement, hoping as I did so that what I needed hadn’t been destroyed like the rest of the firehouse. I knew Egon wasn’t there, even if he hadn’t come up

Yesterday’s events had shaken all of us, even the completely human Winston, and we were going to have to figure out how to deal with the memories and emotions it had stirred up. I know Egon’s in his little Hollow in the Hedge, the one we all know he has but don’t know exactly where it is. Peter’s going to take someone out tonight and party. I don’t know what Winston will do, but he’ll figure something out. Unlike us he’s well adjusted.

And I was going to tinker.

Once I got back down to the basement lab, I took a look around and realized that almost all the damage here was to the containment unit. Good. That means that what I came down for should still be safe.

I went over to the shelving units, and pulled down my boxes. The first thing I pulled out was a bit of wire. Excellent, this one had a positive feel. Most of my wire was charged with negative emotions, a consequence of having to raid junkyards for it and most of the wires being charged from bad car accidents. But _this_ wire was from an old car that had been too broken down for the owner to afford to repair it, but it had been well loved.

A base of affection. The best omen I could think of for the upcoming repairs and reopening of the business.

I smiled, even as I pulled out the bits of Hedge-stuff that would give my Ground Wire its further emotional resonances.

Glancing over the quantities, I saw I would need more Poor-Man’s Tombstone and probably some Endless Entanglement for my new Wire. Everything else I had pretty well stocked. At least those two were easy to find in the Hedge and soon I would be back to relating as well to humans as I ever did. I disliked the Elemental distance that was already settling about me.

Most Elementals are fine with the emotional distance separating ourselves from humans and other Changelings but I had always been unhappy about feeling so disconnected.

I hit on the idea of the Ground Wire when trying to figure out the emotional resonances of various hedge plants and discovering by accident that I understood people’s emotions far better than I had before after I accidentally spilled a solution on the wire from my parents’ car that I had taken to wearing as a bracelet.

As I decided on the exact quantities I would need, I wished that Egon would come to terms with his fae magic. My experiments would be much more fun if he joined in. From what I knew, it wasn’t quite the standard dislike of acknowledging that as changelings we were no longer quite human, because Egon had no problem using other aspects of his Darkling heritage. It was an unvoiced fear. Fear of what, I wasn’t certain, and neither was Peter.

I lost myself in my work so completely that I almost jumped out of my skin when Egon came up behind me and tapped on my shoulder.

“How long has it been?” I asked. I hoped it hadn’t been as long as I feared because if it had, Peter would be extremely worried.

“Three hours,” Egon replied. Good. Peter wouldn’t have called out the cavalry. In fact we might even make it to the hotel before he did. He and Winston were talking to Alvey, a partner of our contract and patent lawyers. “Do you have everything you need?”

“Yeah, let’s go,” I said as I picked up the box I had put my supplies in. Egon gave a brief nod and preceded me up and out of the basement.

* * *

Egon was twitchy all the way to the hotel. Usually he relaxed after the absolute aloneness of his Hollow, so something must be very wrong. Knowing he preferred directness, I asked him, “What’s wrong, Egon.”

He jumped and looked around nervously before he realized that it was me who had spoken. “Something didn’t feel right in the basement. I felt…an echo of _Her_. Not _Her_ actual presence, but as though something _She_ had touched deeply was there.”

There was only one _Her_ that would get Egon this wound up. I frowned, “Something the Snow Queen touched…” The answer came to me, “Egon…could your fetch have been there?”

His eyes widened, “Ray, I think that’s it!” It was his turn to frown, “But why would it be there? It lives in Ohio and I’ve never encountered it before.”

He spent the entire time until Peter came back thinking.

On one level that was good, Egon’s response to threats could be erratic, which was why he went to such great lengths to control himself and his surroundings. If he went into Darkling mode he would quite probably decide to hunt his fetch down. On another level it was bad because he was working himself into a state, increasing his eccentricity. I could see him flipping between human, general Changeling, general Darkling, and specifically Antiquarian modes randomly. And while I knew the response of each, the interactions were completely unpredictable. No matter how well I knew him, the only person who could reliably predict Egon’s response when he was this way was Peter.

Knowing that at this point I could only make things worse, I left Egon to his silent thoughts in the bedroom and went to work curing my Ground Wire.

I lost myself so completely in that task that I only registered Peter’s presence when he snuck up behind me and whispered, “Boo!” into my ear. Although afterwards he made it sound like I hit my head on the ceiling, I didn’t. I only jumped a foot or so. Sometimes Peter’s sense of humor is absolutely vile.

“Peter,” I said, more relieved than annoyed. Peter would be able to help keep Egon on an even keel. “You need to talk with Egon.”

“What’s wrong?” Peter asked, his eyes taking on an intent glow, all thoughts of annoying me or partying out of his head. Peter might be Spring Court, like I am, but both of us were willing to put aside our desires if someone needed help we could provide. The only reason I wasn’t with Egon now is that I couldn’t provide the help he needed and knew it.

“He thinks he sensed his fetch at the firehouse while we were there earlier,” I said, giving voice to all of my worry with that single sentence.

Peter’s expression became greatly concerned. “Fetches usually don’t come around unless they’re plotting something,” He said. “But if he’s working himself into an erratic state he’ll be easy prey.”

He started for the door to the bedroom. “I’ll go talk to him. You wait for half an hour, and then come in, too.”

As I continued my work, I wondered if this fetch even wanted to stir up trouble. It was possible Egon and Peter were borrowing trouble.

I decided to keep my mind open. Not having a fetch myself, maybe I could see these possibilities easier. Peter would call me a Pollyanna, but I could be right.

I ignored the darker side of my nature whispering ‘You just tell yourself that…’

* * *

It was great having Winston to help us rebuild the firehouse. None of us had any construction experience otherwise, and while we had the funds to rebuild ourselves, it would have been financially tricky to hire anyone to rebuild for us. With Winston on board, we had the experience.

Even if Peter whined about the work and Egon tended to space out at times.

Even with the repairs to the containment unit complete, we didn’t take any but the most urgent busts. None of us were exactly comfortable leaving the unit unprotected. Although we didn’t expect attempted breakouts, the enchantment providing pleasant dreams to the spirits within would stop pretty much anything from attempting an escape, there was always a chance of something trying to break in. While we had put a number of safeguards in place, any safeguard invented by man or changeling can be broken by man or changeling. Or weirder things.

Three months later and I had forgotten about the presence of Egon’s fetch. If Peter and Egon had been right about the fetch wanting to do something, it would have happened soon after Egon sensed it. Why it had come, I didn’t know, but hopefully it would know enough to stay away.

My hopes were dashed when I came down to the ground floor and found Janine arguing with Egon’s twin one fine July day. I switched course just as Peter came bursting out of his office, seething with outrage. As I climbed the stairs to the third-floor lab, I prayed that Peter would keep his voice down. I didn’t want Egon to have to face his fetch.

Especially when I had no idea what either of their responses would be.


	3. Worth the Trouble?

While I had no idea what to expect on returning to the now rebuilt firehouse, being verbally accosted by a red-haired woman as soon as I walked in the door certainly wasn’t it. And neither was the same treatment by handsome, glowing man who looked like a statue of a Greek god carved of multi-colored jade.

It took me far too long to realize that this man was Peter Venkman.

The woman was the politer of the pair. Venkman was swearing like a soldier and informing me exactly what type of despicable person I was just for having come here once, much less a second time (And how did they even know that this wasn’t my first visit?).

I almost wished I hadn’t requested that Mom stay in the car while I checked the area.

Wait…he wasn’t even saying person, he said _thing_. As though he knew I wasn’t human. How could he know? The same way I knew he wasn’t, by sight? Can one be a person without being human? If I’m not a person, is he?

The November feeling I had sensed during my prior visit had been fairly constant through my arrival and the beginning of the shouting, but now it was becoming stronger, almost overwhelming. It crested over me and when I looked to the staircase where I had briefly glimpsed the lightning-covered Ray Stantz, I saw my almost double.

As he moved swiftly towards me, I took in the differences, trying to persuade myself that he was the poor duplicate and not myself. Tall and thin, no question, even more attenuated than myself. His cat pupiled eyes were dilated in anger. Writing was across his forehead, around his eyes, on his cheek, about his wrists where they peeked out from underneath his shirt sleeves, which I only had the opportunity to notice when he lifted his arms and then slammed me against the wall. 

“How dare you come here? Was my first life not enough for you? Do you have to try and steal my second life instead of being content with the easy life you were given?”

There was more, but my mind fixated on ‘content with the easy life you were given’. The tone with which that had been said, shouted rather, confirmed my worst fears. I truly was not the original, but rather had been given the life I had by something else.

But living this life had hardly been easy, for all that I had been placed in it prepared. While I had never been subject to physical abuse as the reports indicated that this other Egon Spengler had, the uncertainty of what I was and the (until recently) unconscious knowledge that it could be stripped from me at any time certainly hadn’t been a life of ease. 

Forcing myself to remember what I had gathered about his life, I looked down at his wrists in an attempt to calm myself and saw on one ‘aequitas’. Equality. Justice. And a plan came to me.

Rather than attacking him on grounds of our lives, which I knew would be an unsuccessful comparison if I were to hold to accuracy, and untrue and easily disproved otherwise, I would strike on the basis of what he claimed to be.

I met those feline eyes, and asked, “Where is my aequitas? My iustum?”

He reacted as if I had slapped him, pulling back and gazing at his wrists. His eyes flicked back up to my face, and after a brief pause he said, “I apologize. I lost my sense of aequitas in my fear and anger.” They flicked to the other…whatever…who were present, and said, “I believe we all did.”

Shrugging, he continued, “There is reasoning behind our reaction, but it was faulty. Especially as you came openly and not as a thief in the night. This time,” he added as an afterthought.

“How did you know that this wasn’t my first visit?” I asked. I wanted to know so badly that I might have considered using my abilities again, if I had thought they would give me the knowledge I sought.

“I felt the presence of ice and shadows on the prior occasion,” the other Egon said, as though that explained everything. From the looks on Peter and Ray’s faces, it seemed eminently understandable, even obvious, to them.

Unfortunately for the rest of us the meaning was unclear.

It was the woman who said what was on my mind, “Well, entertaining as it is to stand here listening to you changelings make no sense to anyone else, if I don’t get some answers soon I’m going to go as mad as a certain Windwing. So if one of you’d go tell Winston he’s not going to get hit by friendly fire, we can go sit down and you can give us all some answers.”

Before any of the entities now identified as ‘changelings’ could leave, I raised one hand, index finger upraised so as to indicate a need for a moment of their time, “There is one other person who wishes to be here.”

I froze as four gazes, three inhuman and one all too human, fixed on me. After a far too noticeable pause, I managed to speak to the other Egon, “My…our mother came with me. She’s waiting outside, in the car.”

The other Egon (and one thing we had to decide was who had claim to that name because this was getting far too confusing), couldn’t have looked more stunned if he had experienced a blow to the head. Or to a more sensitive area. Pupils wide, mouth working, he stood still as a statue.

Venkman went to the other Egon’s side, resting a hand on his shoulder. The other Egon came out of his trance, blinking down at Venkman with a questioning gaze. Venkman shrugged slightly, and said, “I think it would help. Even though she’s not the parent you most wanted to see again, the fact that she’s here means she’s willing to give you some closure.”

Giving Venkman a small smile, the other Egon turned to me and said, “I will see her. I suspect that speaking with her might answer a few questions I have had for a long time.”

Wilst my counterpart’s body language and tone of voice were more than ambiguous, I decided that was the best opening I would find. Nodding my thanks, I proceeded out to the car.

* * *

While Mom was too polite to express any doubt as to the veracity of my descriptions of the changelings, it rapidly became clear that she saw nothing odd about any of the three changeling Ghostbusters. They also appeared to have no desire to enlighten her about their odd appearances.

It was the human male, Winston Zeddermore was his name, who upon noticing this, said, “You don’t have to make any Oaths, but one of you should burn off the Mask. At least then she’ll know what she’s dealing with.”

With a tremendous sigh, the other Egon closed his eyes and I saw a brief shimmer about him, as moonlight on ice. I felt cold and stiff for a brief moment, before Mom gasped.

Turning to look at her, I saw from her surprise that she must now see the other Egon as he was. She reached up and after waiting for permission, swept a gentle finger across the writing on his forehead. “Spookums,” she whispered, the nickname she had never called me.

Surprisingly, I didn’t feel cheated. He was ‘Spookums’, I was ‘Lix’, there was no challenge for identity here.

Shuddering, the other Egon turned back to me. His eyes were…strange. I couldn’t read the emotions held within them.

“I am Egon Spengler,” he pronounced. Before I could ask for clarification, he stated with great certainty, “That was the name I was called back from Arcadia by. That is who I am. I will not cede that name.”

Apparently, I was incorrect in assuming that there was no challenge for identity. Yet, although I did not quite understand the reasoning behind his desire to maintain his name as Egon Spengler, I agreed that I did not have first claim on the name.

Rather than arguing with him, I asked, “Do you wish to be Eustace?”

It was his turn to consider, before he said, “No. I will cede to you the name Eustace.”

“Then I shall be Eustace Felix Spengler as soon as I can get the paperwork in order,” I responded firmly, before I asked “But why is the name so necessary?”

“Because after being stripped of every marker and remembrance of mortal identity, or indeed any identity other than what the Snow Queen wished me to possess, for seven years, any identifier of my mortal past is precious.”

Looking at me with cold, yet understanding, eyes, he continued, “Surely you understand the desire for something of your own, my unwitting duplicate? Something that marks you as more than a statue made of ice, magic, and soul fragments, as more than an imperfect mirror of someone else?”

The words themselves might not be kind, and Mom gave him a slightly hurt look because of his seeming unkindness before whispering, “Lix?”

To my surprise, that single word seemed to melt the ice somewhat “You do understand that need, or you would not hunger for that name…fortunate son.”

How could someone so apparently distant from humanity, with no background in psychology know that? I rapidly concluded that it was because what he had said about markers of identity was true.

Venkman spoke up, startling me with his unexpected vocalization, “Don’t write the paper, Spengler, I’ve got dibs on it.”

I found myself staring at his smirk before looking at my counterpart as he gave a soft chuckle. Stantz then exuberantly proclaimed, “This is _great!_ ” before he embraced me with equal enthusiasm.


	4. Knowledge

“I knew he wasn’t dangerous,” I told Peter as we prepared for bed that night.

Peter did his equivalent of rolling his eyes. It was indescribable to anyone who couldn’t see through the Mask to the Mien.

“You hoped beyond all reason and collected evidence that he wasn’t hostile,” he corrected.

“It comes out to the same thing,” I protested innocently. Peter got so much fun winding me up it was always a pleasure to return the favor. He glared at me and I grinned back.

I don’t think Egon will ever be comfortable with Eustace in person, but at least he seemed less defensive about his existence in general. It probably helped that Eustace wanted to establish his own identity as much as Egon wanted to maintain his own. When what both parties want the same thing, negotiations are much easier.

Oddly enough, the presence of Katherine Spengler seemed to remove the inhibitions of both of the men who she dubbed as her sons. I’d have to ask one of them about that at some point, although given their reserve, it seems likely that she was the only person either of them felt free to be themselves around. Maybe.

Egon entered the room, cat eyes briefly flaring in the glow of my lightning and glasses sliding down his nose. Idly, I wondered if ordinary mortals could see the reflection of unearthly light in those glasses. Occasionally, one seemed to see beyond the Mask to the cat eyed Mein below, but they would quickly modify the memory to light reflecting off the glasses.

I knew they’d do that because Peter and I asked around while we were students at Columbia. It got us odd looks, but nothing beyond that. And it won us some status with the Autumn Court. That Court’s fortunes have waned over the intervening years, but being a known ally of the Court of Fear still has its good points. At times it’s been the only thing to stop the rest of the freehold from throwing us out for dabbling in ‘things changelings were not meant to know’.

The whisperers got very quiet after Gozer, though. Just like the academic and scientific community has. I wasn’t beyond feeling a lot of sangfroid. I may be good natured, especially for an Elemental, but that doesn’t mean I like being treated like a joke.

As we settled in for the night Peter began teasing Egon about Eustace. I was happy that they both were comfortable enough for some gentle teasing. Peter’s fetch hadn’t been a creature to consider kin. Eustace, however, was well crafted, his personality showing very little of his fae origins.

I’ll be happy to get to know him, although not nearly as happy as I am to be Egon’s friend.


End file.
